The U.S. is still the only wealthy country that doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave for employees, so rights for working parents are largely won at the state level.

Some states are fighting harder than others.

The National Partnership for Women and Families recently released a U.S. “report card” assigning all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, an A-F grade based on the breadth of policies they’ve aimed at working families. There were no perfect scores — the partnership assigned just three A grades (and 12 Fs), but there were no A+ states — but the spots that topped the rankings offered some mix of mandated parental leave, paid sick days, and accommodations for pregnant women and nursing mothers.

“They may not be head turners,” says Matisse Rhodes, a New Yorker who lived in the Ohio city from 2010 until 2015, “but Clevelanders are among some of the warmest, most genuine people in the country.”

Rhodes isn’t alone in her assessment. In this year’s America’s Favorite Places survey, T+L readers scored cities across a wide range of categories, including how attractive locals are: and Clevelanders ranked near the bottom for their looks.

A crowdfunding campaign has been held to restore the Great Wall of China to prevent its further damage. This campaign is run by the China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation, an organization that is semi-supported by the government. To be able to restore the Great Wall, the campaign needs $1.6 million (11 million yuan).

When pushing ideas forward into the unknown make sure you know where you are playing.

The rise of the “lean start-up” in the late 2000s revolutionised the way entrepreneurs developed their businesses. By highlighting the importance of experimentation and customer feedback it identified a means of effectively and efficiently creating and capturing value in the search process.

In a previous post, I wrote about why corporate leaders may be right to shut down non-performing innovation labs. That article focused on what innovation managers get wrong when they engage in innovation theatre rather than real innovation, which is the combination of great new products with sustainably profitable business models. In the interests of being fair and balanced, this article turns its attention to the mistakes that corporate leaders make when managing innovation.

Everyone likes to talk about innovation, but how can you stop simply talking about and start driving real innovation in biotech? We looked at some of the most ground-breaking, silo-busting movers and shakers around to bring you the "Top 5 Ways to Innovate in Biotech".

#1 Diversity is not just good business, it makes for good science. People who grew up in the same parts of a country and went to similar schools often have comparable approaches to solving problems. As such, homogeneous groups of these individuals tend to get stuck on problems at the same point. Diverse teams, in contrast, come at problems from lots of different angles, enabling them to find creative solutions. Jeffrey Karp, Principal Investigator and Founder of Karp Lab populates his clinic with scientists from around the world: “We’ve had people from over thirty different countries,” he said. “I think this has been important because people in different places, they have different ways of thinking, different ways of solving problems.”

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is launching a new grant program aimed at funding new ideas to promote entrepreneurship in the state.

The competitive $500,000  program will award grants between $10,000 and $100,000 to programs that promote entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education, mentorship, training, business development and financial services.

In particular, the grant program is intended to fill gaps in potential funding for programs that may not be covered by WEDC’s other programs, said Aaron Hagar, WEDC vice president of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Entrepreneurial preparation and education is interesting. For obvious reasons, preparation matters; the more informed you are about the logistics of business ownership and the interdisciplinary knowledge you need to keep things running smoothly, the better you’ll be able to manage an enterprise.

But at the same time, there are some things about entrepreneurship you can’t learn in business school.

With climate change and pressing social issues knocking on the door of an increasingly interconnected planet, the world needs social entrepreneurs more than ever.

Tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges requires courage, and a true representative of that courage is Stacy Flynn, co-founder of the trailblazing textile technology start-up Evrnu and winner of the Fabric of Change challenge.

You stressed over every little adjective on your resume ("efficient or productive?"). You wrote draft after draft of your cover letter. And now you’ve arrived at the moment of truth: the job interview, when you’ll be face to face with the person who controls your employment destiny.

Are you really gonna leave this one up to fate?

Even the most charming of candidates needs to practice before stepping in front of a hiring manager.

Mandates for the provision of telemedicine have driven insurance companies and employers to jump into arrangements with pre-smartphone era companies like Teladoc, MD Live, and American Well.

The availability of low-risk arrangements for the payer make these deals attractive because they’re light on out-of-pocket expenses, often only charging when a visit occurs or requiring a co-pay to discourage use. But offering care in a lower-cost venue only saves money if people use it.

Two of the nation’s most seasoned and respected technology investors have delivered a wake-up call to the local sector, warning that the growing number of firms nurturing start-ups must produce quality companies that generate strong revenues and employment.

Daniel Petre and Craig Blair, who together have built almost 25 technology businesses over the past 15 years, said they were excited by the prospect of more than $1 billion in venture capital being raised this year by funds looking to invest in local and international start-ups.

Image: http://www.theaustralian.com.au

The U.S. DOT released Thursday the first version of its National Transit Map, an open data compilation of stops, routes and schedules from 270 U.S. transit agencies. Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the project in March by asking agencies to voluntarily submit data about their routes and schedules. Version one includes 10,000 routes and nearly 400,000 stops and stations submitted from about a third of all urban U.S. transit agencies with fixed-route service. The map includes 84 percent of the top 25 urban transit agencies, and 74 percent of the top 50. The U.S. DOT is hoping future versions will build on this data set.

Image: The National Transit Map (Credit: U.S. DOT)

Well, yes, you should avoid raising money unless:

(x) you need it or

(y) it’s dirt cheap.

Look at Dell. Notwithstanding its current market challenges, Michael Dell himself still owns 80% of Dell worth $18.5 billion (see Dell Gets Bigger and Hewlett Packard Gets Smaller in Separate Deals). Atlassian never required any outside capital (wow) other than selling secondary shares later at a high valuation. Qualtrics did the same. 37 Signals, etc. Awesome.

But …

Year by year, the IBD Awards have grown. This year’s entries represented an astonishingly strong survey of innovation around the globe—over 1,700 designs. In the eyes of our esteemed judges, the projects you'll find below were the best of the best. There were only 15 winners anointed in the entire competition; we also crowned about 231 finalists. Each of those projects represent what's best about design today: Big ideas, meticulously thought-out details, and a clear viewpoint about how we live now—and how it could be better. We hope that you’ll dig in and be inspired.

The “venture recession” of 2016 is in full swing. Combined with the usual summer slowdown, some are already raising the spectre of 2001 or 2008. Recession or not, what is universal is the bewilderment of many entrepreneurs on how negative VCs have become over the past nine months after almost five years of non-stop cheerleading.

As an entrepreneur on the other side of that table many moons ago, I always wondered the same thing – how the venture investment cycle goes from cold to hot to cold again with almost zero connection to the actual fundamentals of the companies seeking funding.

Wilhelm Reich, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, laid the foundation for five classic personality types which, to this day, are well recognized in the field of psychology. Dr. Reich actually identified the body builds of these five types first, and then identified the personality types. Here, I discuss both. The theory of, and how to therapeutically deal with, these types is beyond the scope of this article. However, by knowing about and working with these five classic personality types, you can understand yourself better and become more effective at working with others.

It seems that innovation is now an imperative for every company and every chief executive. Leaders all stress the importance of agility, entrepreneurship and innovation in their organisations, yet most of them are frustrated by slow progress.

What can we do to boost our lateral thinking and creativity? How can we and our teams become the innovative pioneers we aspire to be?

One way is to mimic the approaches of great innovators from the past. What did they do? And which of their insights can we apply to our work?

"It happens every several years," says David Kahan, CEO of Birkenstock USA, the American division of the German company. "The planets line up and Birkenstocks become fashionable again."

Perhaps because Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn are all currently in retrograde, we're currently experiencing one of these auspicious periods right now.

Almost against their will, fashion magazines are admitting that Birkenstocks are having a moment. In May, Vogue published a story featuring a paparazzi shot of Ashley Olson in a pair of Birkenstock Gizeh sandals and described the brand as "patient zero of the current ugly shoe movement." (Several members of Vogue's staff chimed in saying they "remain unapologetic" about their loyalty to Birkenstocks.)

Image: Flickr user Freedom II Andres

The Small Business Development Center, Invest Detroit, Automation Alley and TechTown are some of the beneficiaries of a budget increase for support of entrepreneurship and innovation by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

According to Emily Guerrant, MEDC vice president of marketing, the budget for entrepreneurship and innovation has been increased from $19 million in the current fiscal year to $21.4 million, while the overall budget for the MEDC was cut by $1.5 million by legislators to $251.9 million.